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I’d always assumed the criteria were loose (at best), but I didn’t realize that the only necessary condition of stating that a movie is “Based On” the book is a cursory glance at the book’s cover and a $150 million budget.

No, really; that’s it.

And I know “the book” is traditionally supposed to be better than the movie — but Darwin’s On The Origin of the Species has more in common with AVPR than Will Smith’s (and Francis Lawrence’s, or whoever’s responsible) “I Am Legend” does with Matheson’s.

The result is so unrecognizable, and so irredeemably awful, that–well, there’s nothing to say. The only tension in the movie was the hope, the slightest glimmer of possibility, that the filmmakers were bright enough to use the book’s best elements in a good way, or even a bad way.

Instead, they didn’t use them at all. They used a name, and a title, and a scary thing in the darkness.

Of the boatload of movies I watched in 2007 (see the complete list here), the following are my favorites. You get the 30-second version of why each movie makes the list, and nothing more.

Movies Released In (Or Near) 2007:

Stardust - [****] - 2007 / Matthew Vaughn: A fairy tale, but jazzy, expansive, and cock-eyed. Warm and cheery, dark and sinister, truthful. Like all good stories.

Mr. Brooks - [****] - 2007 / Bruce Evans: Maybe the appeal of this lies in how convincingly Kevin Costner plays a serial killer. Maybe not. A part or two silly, but otherwise solidly presented, and with an interesting score.

No Country for Old Men - [****1/2] - 2007 / Coen Brothers: Bleak, dusty, and bloody. (Though not as bleak and dusty as “There Will Be Blood”.) Tommy Lee Jones pitch-perfect, though performances really outstanding across the board. Everything unexpected, even when it isn’t.

Eastern Promises - [****] - 2007 / David Cronenberg: Another solid foray into organized crime by Cronenberg. More straightforward, maybe, than “A History of Violence”, but no less bloody. A conscience you don’t expect. A grimness you do.

Bourne Ultimatum - [****] - 2007 / Paul Greengrass: I’ve enjoyed the Bourne movies, and this installment is a solid addition. For non-fans of the series, this movie will not be a mind-changer, though it is better than The Bourne Supremacy, and arguably better than The Bourne Identity (despite the sad fact of “Ultimatum” not having Franka Potente).

Grindhouse - [****1/2] - 2007 / Robert Rodriguez & Quentin Tarantino: A blast of a double-feature, ridiculous, over-the-top, and phenomenal. Gory and dark, some, but largely hilarious.

Hot Fuzz - [****] - 2007 / Edgar Wright: A genius bit of action comedy unlike a most all American action-comedies, which are rarely much of either. A spoof that’s honest to itself, and solid in its own right. And what other movie have Bill Nighy, Timothy Dalton, and a masked Cate Blanchett appeared together?

Leben der Anderen, Das - [****1/2] - 2006 / Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

Gwoemul [Host] - [***1/2] - 2006 / Joon-ho Bong: Horror done right, which is to say knuckle-gripping and startling, but with glimpses of real emotion, dashes of uncertain comedy. And evil scientists, sure.

Movies Released Before 2007:

Werckmeister harmóniák [Werckmeister Harmonies] - [****1/2]: It’s only a slight exaggeration to say this film secured a place in my favorites in its first fifteen minutes. There’s a whale, though it doesn’t do much. There’s a main character who, mysteriously, never makes a single appearance. The director isn’t even sure why, so there’s no reason you should have any idea. And that’s fine.

Porco Rosso - [****] - 1992 / Hayao Miyazaki: I’ve been meaning to see this, and wish I had, sooner. It’s strange how non-surreal this movie is, considering it’s a kind of anime noir about a pilot turned into a pig in a world ravaged by sky-pirates.

Primal Fear - [****1/2] - 1996 / Gregory Hoblit: A solid, straightforward criminal procedural that is, but isn’t straightforward. Twisting and smart.

Notorious - [****] - 1946 / Alfred Hitchcock: A wholeheartedly solid Hitchcock movie. Noir, if not at its best, then extremely close. A movie that has aged surprisingly well, considering. Begins and ends with near-perfection.

Fido - [****] - 2006 / Andrew Currie: Everyone else has adorable zombie slaves, why shouldn’t we? That’s the message I got from this movie. Or was it, bullies deserve to be attacked by malfunctioning zombie-slaves? I’m really not sure any more. Anyway, a fine comedy horror period piece, if the parallel-universe 1950s can count as a period. Billy Connolly has never so convincingly played a zombie.

(2001) dirs. Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky - w/ Lars Rudolph, Peter Fitz, Hanna Schygulla, and so on.

Synopsis: The meaning of life is contemplated, mail is delivered, the circus comes to town. Angry mobs and bonfires, some are driven mad. There Is A Whale.

Review: It’s only a slight exaggeration to say this film secured a place in my favorites in its first fifteen minutes. There’s a certain understated elegance, but I’d be lying if I told you I knew exactly what I like so much about this movie. Watch the opening scene yourself, and see. (Although it is certainly better, and more compelling, to see it on a larger screen, and as part of the larger movie.) Werckmeister Harmonies is a mostly inscrutable movie, filled with ambivalent but excellent imagery, curious characters, and stunning music.

Rating: [••••½] out of [•••••]

(2006) dir. Andrew Currie - w/ Carrie-Anne Moss, Billy Connolly as a boy’s best friend, Dylan Baker as a man who has problems with zombies, K’Sun Ray as a zombie’s best friend, and others, in roles such as: Zombie Grandpa, Zombie Paperboy, Human Milkman, Dr. Hrothgar Geiger, and Poacher Driver (Zombie Poaching apparently being a lucrative career choice).

Synopsis: It’s the future, kind of, in an alternate sort of universe where it’s like the 1950s except for the part where space-dust has turned all the dead people into zombies, and a giant corporation has harnessed zombie power for the good of humanity. Also, you’re not allowed to have hand-guns till you’re 13 (until then, you have to make do with rifles–you think I’m kidding, but I’m not).

Review: Expecting to be mildly amused, I was warmly surprised by this movie. Morbidly heart-warming and coy, this is no great epic, but there are moments of surprising depth. It’s a stretch to apply the word “realistic”, probably, but there are scenes in which you realize that Fido (the titular zombie, played by Billy Connolly), despite being dead and all, is more human, and more compassionate, than some of the non-zombie characters. Performances all around are pretty swell–particularly Carrie-Anne Moss’s, which surprises particularly when compared to some of her better-known roles. All in all a comic, satisfying romp.

Rating: [••••] out of [•••••]

(2007) dir. Edgar Wright - w/ Simon Pegg as the dutifully over-efficient constable, Nick Frost as his bumbling partner in the country, and a slew of other notables: Bill Nighy, Martin Freeman, Edward Woodward–the Equalizer, folks!–, Timothy Dalton as the unctuously murderous supermarket magnate, Cate Blanchett with a mask over her face, and Peter Jackson as a crazed mall Santa. What’s not to love?

Synopsis: Nicholas Angel has only ever wanted to be a police officer–except that brief moment where he wanted to be Kermit the frog–and for his diligence, efficiency, and excellence, his fellow officers are made to look lazy. So of course he’s promoted to the countryside, where things are quiet, he arrests his would-be partner for drunk driving, and a swan’s on the loose. Of course, things are never quite so bucolic and peaceful as they seem at first glance…

Review: Hot Fuzz is, in a word, brilliant. It parodies the big budget American cop film, but in a different way than a parallel universe American counterpart would. (It’s not a straight parody, for starters.) Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg possess a strange intuition of when going overboard suits the film, and when playing it straight holds everything together. The quips and puns are packed to an absurd density, but that doesn’t prevent the citizens of this fine movie from being earnest from time to time. Except Timothy Dalton, whose character really doesn’t have an appropriate moment to be earnest. And a couple other people. But it’s a lovely movie. Full of explosions and sight gags and self-referential humor and blood. Something for everyone. It’s kind of like ‘Lethal Weapon’ meets ‘The Full Monty’, though of course there are a few differences.

Rating: [••••] out of [•••••] - (4/5)

(2006) unter der Regie von Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck - mit Martina Gedeck, Ulrich Mühe, Sebastian Koch, und Volkmar Kleinert. English title: “The Lives of Others”.

Synopsis: It’s before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and East Germany’s Stasi has its hands plenty full keeping track of the thoughts and actions not just of the outright subversive, but of the clean, the believers–of the potentially subversive. Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler gets pulled away from teaching the next generation of secret police and tasked instead to a particularly important mission: listening in on playwright Georg Dreyman, one of the DDR’s only non-subversive writers. All because Minister Bruno Hempf finds Dreyman a potential threat, and because Hauptmann sees potential subversion in everyone; it’s what he teaches, after all.

Review: This is a movie that seems to get human nature right. The actions taking place within it are absurd, disheartening, malicious, frightened, pensive, and totally believable. These characters are not means to an end–furtherances of the plot–but actual (well, “actual”) people, living their confused, erratic lives from day to day, and wondering what’s next.

Everyone’s being watched, or about to be watched, and fully cognizant of it. A woman in an apartment building watches through the door’s peep-hole as secret police as her neighbor’s apartment is bugged. Wiesler realizes this and knocks on her door, which she opens; he threatens her, and when she agrees to say nothing of the operation, he turns to a subordinate and says “send Mrs. Meineke a nice gift.”

There are monsters here, and misguided souls, and victims. What’s interesting is how your certainty of which characters fall into which categories erodes as the movie moves forward, until, at the end, you’re not where you were before. You’re someplace different.

Rating: [••••½] out of [•••••]

More than any other year in recent memory (recent memory being about five years, give or take), I’ve managed to see an outstanding line-up of movies. (Don’t get me wrong–there were massive duds, too; like The Punisher, and Primer, and Dogville.) Some of them were actually released this year, but most of them have been around for a while, making their appearance by way of Netflix. Here’s where I say a word or two about the best I’ve seen.

For novelty purposes, I’m going to divide the movies into semi-arbitrary categories and then pick a category winner. Keep in mind the fact that I’ve already culled the herd (because, honestly, it would be embarrassing to pit, say, The Mummy Returns against Dellamorte Dellamore in the “undead” category).

1. Movies Released This Year

Contenders: Casino Royale; The Prestige; The Proposition; The Science of Sleep; X3

There’s X3, which holds its own as a decent action movie. Not exactly brilliant, but a fine addition to the X-Men franchise. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really stand much of a chance of winning here, so let’s move to The Proposition, which comes up as a natural must-see for Nick Cave fans. An Australian western, filled with spectacular imagery, stand-out acting, and held up by a surprisingly solid plot. Gruesome, as you might expect. Maybe more. I was blown away by The Science of Sleep, which took me almost totally by surprise. This movie is the quirkier, more independent, more heart-wrenchingly brilliant, distant cousin of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (which was crafted by the same director, Michel Gondry). The Prestige, a movie about dueling magicians, by Christopher Nolan (of Memento, Insomnia, and Batman Begins), is intentionally clever, but–and this is where individual mileage may vary–by the end of the movie, it was more clever than I’d given it credit for. And that made it as impressive as the magic tricks it meant to portray. And for theatre-fare, the last real contender is Casino Royale.  Which, honestly, I loved–but which still doesn’t stand a chance against The Science of Sleep.
Winner: The Science of Sleep.

2. Documentaries

Contenders: Fog of War; Why We Fight; Winged Migration

Fog of War (about Robert McNamara) is historically interesting yet still relevant, and Winged Migration is wholly spectacular and a movie I’m glad I got the chance to see on the big screen; but Why We Fight was the movie that astounded me most of all. Maybe it does preach to the choir, but it does so with vigor and conviction.

Winner: Why We Fight.

3. Noir (Or Something Like It)

Contenders: Brick; Heist; Jackie Brown; Shadow of a Doubt

Admittedly, this is a scattershot realm of noir-ish movies, but it’ll have to do. Shadow of a Doubt sets a high standard, but despite its good execution and status as a “classic”, felt a bit dated, even if it does still have the power to surprise. Heist and Jackie Brown both pay tribute to Shadow in their own ways. Heist is one of David Mamet’s outings, and true to form, it’s filled with fantastic lines, strong acting, and a curious, cock-eyed rhythm. Jackie Brown somehow ends up being Pulp Fiction’s less-referenced poor relation, even though it’s nearly as strong. Each film in this category is astounding in its own way, and in a few years, Brick may fall by the wayside, a brief flickering that never really made its impact on film history. But for now, Brick is my favorite. Confident, lyric, and spooky, Brick casts a startling shadow.

Winner: Brick.

4. Not Alive, Not Dead

Contenders: Alice; Dellamorte Dellamore; Otesanek

Be it zombies or animated animal pelts or a dead log, this is surely a strange competition. Alice is a surreal stop-animation retelling of Alice in Wonderland; it uses animal bones and household objects, socks and pots, dolls and keys to create a hugely surreal landscape. Otesanek, by the same director, tells the story of a childless couple that take in a piece of tree root which (naturally) becomes animate, and hungry for human flesh, at that (of course). But Dellamorte Dellamore (re-titled in English as “Cemetery Man”) is the most captivating of the lot, telling a story in which zombies are, if anything, a minor detail, and loneliness, confusion, and loss are the presiding factors.

Winner: Dellamorte Dellamore.

5. It’s A Crime

Contenders: Heat; Io Non Ho Paura; Le Professionnel

Each of these movies is about a different kind of crime. Heat concerns what we think of (by way of film, mostly) as “professional” crime: painstakingly choreographed crime, flawlessly executed and nearly certain to be successful. Io Non Ho Paura (”I’m not afraid”) is about the kind of beast professional crime becomes when it invades the lives of ordinary people. And Le Professionnel is essentially the story of state-sponsored crime, spies trained to kill other countries’ officials. Heat brings with it a stellar cast and excellent production values. Io Non Ho Paura brings nuance and compelling morality plays: a story you can believe, one that involves not superstars and machine-guns, but down-the-street neighbors and greed. Le Professionnel brings style, and totally unfettered panache. Heat is in many regards the best movie of the group, but Le Professionnel wins my vote because it dares to end with style.

Winner: Le Professionnel.

6. Strange Connectors

Contenders: Carnages; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; Kontroll; Oldboy

These are movies about interconnectedness. In Carnages, everyone is connected by the remains of a slaughtered bull, eating its flesh and buying its parts and puzzling over the meaning of it all. It’s a gimmick, but it works, kind of. Oldboy is a crime-drama/thriller in which the characters’ connection really doesn’t emerge until the end–and when it does, you’re either convinced, or not. Compelling, but absurd. Frantic, but paced. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is about the connection of memory, and what the world might be like where we could… Well, you know. Erase it, and stuff. Love could be a dirty word, and fate wonders what kind of place it has in the world. But Kontroll, a beautifully serene tale of friendship and redemption (or something close enough) that’s just a bit too convoluted to be a parable, cut-and-dried, steals my heart. And my vote.

Winner: Kontroll.

7. Absurd to Reason

Contenders: Brazil; Delicatessen; Howl’s Moving Castle; I Heart Huckabees; Ivan Vasilevich menyaet professiyu

Of course it’s not reality, that’s why we love it so much. Ivan Vasilevich Menyaet Professiyu lets Ivan the Terrible and one of his modern descendants switch places, and does so to comical effect. It’s a fun gag, all the better since the movie’s actually in Russian. Brazil is comical, but dark: a future wound up in bureaucratic incompetence (all the more horrifying because it’s recognizable), technology, and blood. Wildly imaginative, like everything Terry Gilliam does. Howl’s Moving Castle, magical, murky fare from the ever-splendid Miyazaki, shows us a world of war and demons, enchanted scarecrows (or…?) and canine spies. Delicatessen is dark, like Brazil, but contains a larger spark of hope that things might turn out right, even if people are eating one another. The moral of the story: as long as there are clowns, we can overcome cannibalism? Or…? But I Heart Huckabees is the most hopeful of all, promising, maybe, that all the nonsense in the world will find its own way to work out, if we just let it. The characters in the other movies dance awkwardly around their unreasonable worlds, but in I Heart Huckabees, you get the feeling that everyone actually develops, even if all that really means is they get hit in the face.

Winner: I Heart Huckabees.

Overall winner…

Oh, you’ve got to be kidding; I’m not a miracle-worker.

(2006) dir. Michel Gondry - w/ Gael García Bernal, Charlotte Gainsbourg, plus also Alain Chabat, Miou-Miou, Emma de Caunes, Aurélia Petit, Sacha Bourdo, Pierre Vaneck, Stéphane Metzger, Alain de Moyencourt, and so on.

Synopsis: Any ‘plot summary’ you get is going to be deficient in some way; this is a movie that veers back and forth between the mundane and the serene, touching on both the surreal and the concrete with astonishing aplomb. It’s a movie that confuses dreaming and reality, but not in the tricksy way of a movie like Fight Club. The basis for the whole thing is Stéphane (Gael García Bernal) moving back home, getting a job, and falling for his next-door neighbor Stéphanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg), dreaming in-between and along the way.

Review: This is one of the most gracefully heartfelt (and heart-breaking) movies I’ve seen in a long time. It’s by turns sweet and cruel, fantastical and earth-bound, heart-breaking and hopeful. In spite of the props and dream-sequences and sometimes goofy dialogue, this is an eminently believable movie: I didn’t get the sense of watching a movie, but of watching a story unfold, of seeing something actually happening. The things I saw happen made me wince, cringe, laugh, sigh, grin.

“The Science of Sleep”, for what it’s worth, is not an American film. It’s done by the fellow (Michel Gondry) who brought us “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”, but it’s light-years beyond that, if it’s even really fair to compare the movies. The people in this movie talk across languages and boundaries; they talk in French, English, Spanish, and a jumble in-between. The misunderstandings in this story come from barriers erected by language, emotion, manners, and chance. Stéphane tries to untangle these misunderstandings in his dreams. Whether or not he’s able to do this is maybe open to interpretation.

Stéphane and Stéphanie make things with their hands—crafts, gadgets, dreams—and this is how they relate to one another, and how they push forward even when they can’t relate. Imagination. Even the people around them, people you may not necessarily like, or sympathize for, prove to have their own creative sides, depths you didn’t expect them to have. This is a story that doesn’t try to explain so much as it tries to explore. It’s genuine, and tender, and harsh, and brittle, and confused, just like all the people populating its interior; just like life.

Rating: [•••••] out of [•••••]

(1994) - AKA “Cemetery Man” - dir. Michele Soavi - w/ Rupert Everett as the keeper of the cemetery, Francois Hadji-Lazaro as his faithful assistant, and Anna Falchi as approximately 37 different people.

Synopsis: Rupert Everett is Francesco Dellamorte, the keeper of a cemetery in a small town in Italy. He has a steady job, a more or less faithful assistant, and a minor problem with the people he buries not staying dead. Also, he’s kind of sick of the town, though that’s understandable; the mayor doesn’t really know what he has to put up with (the contant re-killing of the dead), the townsfolk spread vicious rumors about him (which may or may not be rumors), and his faithful sidekick isn’t much for conversation. Also, he’s not too lucky at love.

Review: Though this movie is often camp at its best, it also winds up being a curiously thoughtful film. I thoroughly enjoyed Cemetery Man, not least because of its dabblings in circular time and fluid identities. Time is circular here, but not simply because of the whole zombie thing, either; I don’t think it gives anything away to say that this is a wildly circular film. (Particularly since you won’t be able to tell what I’m talking about until after you’ve viewed the whole movie.) Identity is played with in interestingly absurd ways. Another interesting component about the movie is that the zombies in it aren’t particularly dangerous, an observation I seem to recall being made in some other review. While the whole life/death thing is pretty prominent in the plot, it’s prominent in ways larger than you might expect. The movie’s tagline, via IMDB, is “Zombies, guns, and sex, OH MY!!!” But don’t let that fool you, entirely.

Rating: [••••½] out of [•••••]

(2005) dir. John Hillcoat - w/ Guy Pearce, Emily Watson, Ray Winstone, David Wenham, Richard Wilson, and Danny Huston; and let’s not forget John Hurt as an ornery bounty hunter (as opposed to what, indeed) - written by Nick Cave

Synopsis: Set at the end of the 1800s, The Proposition, as it might be expected, is about a Deal, an Offer. Captain Stanley (Winstone), capturing part but not all of a notorious outlaw gang—the dread Burns gang—gives one fellow (Pearce) an ultimatum: kill his older, wiser, more bloodthirsty brother, or his little helpless brother dies. This is the aformentioned “proposition”. Of course it’s not as straightforward as all that. There’s frontier philosophy, and blood, and ominous rain & thunder.

Review: All in all, The Proposition is excellent. Its faults and its strengths share a common root: Nick Cave. The problem is, if you’ve heard one Nick Cave song or if you’ve heard ten, you can predict the ending of this movie, more or less. Or at the very least, you can roughly sketch out the route it’s going to take. As far as fifty minutes into the movie, I had a hard time viewing this as anything more than an extended music video of a Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds song, which made it hard to become fully immersed in the movie. Mind you, it was a good song, and a well put-together music video. But it takes a while for the characters to fully emerge. Once that happens, though, the sparks fly; titans clash, gears click, etc. It works, pretty much.

Rating: [••••] out of [•••••]

Saw and read lots of things. Same old story. Here, let’s think. Watched Cronenberg’s A History of Violence, which I thoroughly enjoyed; was at times an uncomfortable enjoyment, but that’s I think what Cronenberg was going for, mood-wise. Excellent performances all around, with what you might call a tightly-crafted script. This is a movie that manages to navigate between heady theory and base physicality without ever letting you know quite where it is at any given moment; it’s a thoughtful movie that throws you around, basically.

Lots of quality but non-outstanding books on my recently-finished list as of late. The new Bret Easton Ellis novel, Lunar Park, was better and worse than some of his other writing. Better writing than the earliest stuff, but not superior to Glamorama or American Psycho. Lunar Park was extremely promising at times—mostly when bizarrely surreal elements began creeping in—but in the end the whole thing was basically self-deflating. Pffft. If you haven’t already read an Ellis novel, I don’t know that you’d want to start with this one.

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, fairly excellent. It’s an ‘unauthorized autobiography,’ which should give you some idea of the tone. Yes, the movie of the same name is based on it. Good, crazy fun. The book, for those not in the know, is Chuck Barris attempting to recount his frenzied dual rise to prominence as a game show producer and CIA assassin. It’s generally a quick read, as long as you don’t get bogged down by the whole question of what’s real and so forth.

I picked up Alain Robbe-Grillet’s Repetition partly on the merits of its cover, and wasn’t disappointed. Though confused. There’s some weird stuff that goes on with the tenses and what-have-you—this is ascribed to Robbe-Grillet’s unique literary theories by someone inside the front cover—but none of it is in any way unreadably strange. Brain calisthenics, is all. The story, if you’re interested in knowing, is a sort of noir spy thriller sort of thing, but without much clarity as far as any of the spy details are concerned.

Alongside Repetition, I read another slightly off-kilter spy novel: Tremor of Intent, by Anthony Burgess. Which certainly didn’t help with the whole confusion thing—I wasn’t actively trying to seek out spy novels—but did perhaps help to set the mood of the reading. Tremor of Intent is simultaneously serious and goofy, satiric and honorable, and/or highly detailed and generic. All these things are at least partly true. Generally speaking, if the vague mention of “theory” and “weird stuff” of Repetition sound like something you might not go for, you might still be able to enjoy Tremor of Intent. Imagine an older, vastly more cynical, slightly more cunning James Bond and place him on a wild last retirement mission, and you have a vague idea of this book (though you’ll probably have more misconceptions than you will correct assumptions… but oh well.).

All in all, a pretty good collection of entertainment media.

(2004) Guillermo del Toro - w/ Ron Perlman, John Hurt, Selma Blair, Rupert Evans, and Doug Jones, Brian Steele & Ladislav Berain in roles as characters you’d never ever recognize in any other film, ever

Synopsis: You’ve got yer evil, last ditch Nazi plot to unleash demons, etc., which is oh-so-fortuitiously interrupted before too much evil can be unleashed. A demon’s unleashed, but it’s only a wee sprout, and it’s plucked up by the Allies and raised to fight on the side of good. This good demon is the eponymous Hellboy, raised and nurtured under the aegis of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense. This set-up brings you maybe 10 or 15 minutes into the movie; from there on out it’s present-day USA, with Hellboy fighting evil alongside the likes of telepathic fish-man Abe Sapien [Doug Jones, completely unrecognizable under all the costumey goop] and his FBI caretakers. Throw in FBI newbie John Myers [Rupert Evans], Hellboy love-interest and firestarter (pyrokinetic) Selma Blair [Liz Sherman], and old foes stirred up from the past, and you have ‘Hellboy’, the movie.

Review: ‘Hellboy’ is not the most brilliant movie you’ll ever see.

(I hope I didn’t startle you too much.)

It’s decent. As long as you accept the initial premise—which, as movies like this go, is the unspoken requirement—the rest of the movie isn’t that bad, and in fact is not a waste of 125 minutes, generally speaking. The monsters and various bad guys (particularly Sammael and Kroenen) are fun to watch, and the dialogue is rarely awful. I know that the fact of dialogue being “rarely awful” doesn’t sound like high praise, but I didn’t start out with terribly high expectations. All things considered, I was pleasantly surprised. Also, the movie’s not raucously funny, but there are a few dryly comedic parts (and other less dry parts) that helped to improve the overall quality of the movie. Watch for a fun gag after the credits (or part way between, I couldn’t say for sure which). In a less charitable mood, I might rate a movie like Hellboy at only 3 star-type-things, but as-is, I’m giving it 3 1/2.

Rating: [•••½] out of [•••••]

In lieu of an actual review, since I’m guessing a movie like Spider-Man isn’t one you need a synopsis and/or thoughtful review for, I’m going to present a pro/con list—reasons why you might like Spider-Man 2 more than you’d expect, and reasons why you might not.

Reasons why you might like Spider-Man 2 more than you’d expect:

1. The story is written in part by Michael Chabon, who wrote the tremendous novel, The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (if you’ve read it, you probably know why this is an asset to Spider-Man 2; if you haven’t, you should). It’s hard to sum up in one sentence what happens in TAoK&C, because a lot happens, but one salient detail of which you should be aware is, it’s about comic book artists. And WWII and growing up and friendship and all sorts of good stuff like that, but in its most basic incarnation, comic book artists. It’s also exceptionally well-written, as books go. And the story (i.e., plot) is phenomenal. I’m guessing that these are the three major reasons (to recap: [1] focus on comic book artists, [2] quality of writing, and [3] brilliance of story) why Chabon was brought on board to help write the story for Spider-Man 2, but I could be wrong.
2. Bruce Campbell has a cameo, with the role of a “snooty usher.” (As it turns out, he had a role in the first Spider-Man, too, but I’d forgotten that. [He was the announcer in the wrestling ring.])
3. There are a couple surprisingly brilliant comedic moments, some that figure into the movie at large and some that do not, but [almost] all of which are hilarious. The montage with “Raindrops keep falling on my head” as the background music comes immediately to mind, as does an incident involving spiderman waiting in an elevator (guy standing in elevator: “Nice Spidey outfit…” PP: “Thanks.” g.s.i.e.: “Where’d you get it?” PP: “I… made it.” g.s.i.e.: “It looks uncomfortable.” etc.). But there’s more, too.
4. J.K. Simmons, filling out the role of the sharp-tongued, fast-talking newspaper editor J. Jonah Jameson once again, is pretty much one of the stand-out characters of the film.

Reasons why you might not:

1. The ending’s predictable. Hell, a lot of the movie is predictable to one extent or another. There are surprises, there are (a few) twists, but on the whole, it’s not the same as seeing a movie like Usual Suspect for the first time. What were you expecting, Spider-Man gets killed 45 minutes into the film?
2. There’s some goop. Yes, Spider-Man 2 is not without goop. And by “goop,” I mean dangerously trite dialogue that may potentially threaten the very sanity of the viewer. Spider-Man 2 has a story to tell, what story deals with romance and the like in a very circumspect way; seeing as there are a few things for the movie to resolve other than Spidey & MJ (like the total destruction of NY, for instance), it’s not like there was a lot of choice here. It was either 1: goop or 2: cut out some of the action. You would have preferred…?
3. You hate big-budget action movies on principle and/or you have particular disdain for comic book characters. If either of these statements describes you, I’m not going to lie and say you’ll love the film. You probably wouldn’t.

Rating: [•••½] out of [•••••]

(2003) Robert Rodriguez - Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, Johnny Depp, Mickey Rourke, Eva Mendes, Danny Trejo, Rubén Blades, Willem Dafoe, et al.

Synopsis: The plot of ‘Once Upon A Time In Mexico’, while not out-and-out absent, is somewhat tenuous; think ‘Desperado II’ (Or ‘El Mariachi 3′, but who’s keeping track), throw in a violently eccentric CIA agent, ex-FBI, a coup attempt, and some absurdly out-of-place flashbacks, and you have OUATIM. It’s El Mariachi (i.e., Antonio Banderas) back for revenge, but drawn there unwillingly. Johnny Depp is CIA, Mickey Rourke is a fugitive from the U.S. (though this fact is only incidental to the plot), Pedro Armendariz, Jr., is the President of Mexico, and Willem Dafoe is the dread Barillo.

Review: You have to give Rodriguez credit: he not only directed, but wrote the music, wrangled the cameras, and edited the thing; it’s almost surprising he didn’t do the stunts himself and handle the special effects. Unfortunately, the man needs to learn how to delegate responsibility. ‘Once Upon A Time In Mexico’ is halfway decent—particularly towards the beginning—but taken as a whole, it’s weak, confusing, and awkward. Surprisingly, Johnny Depp (or his character, anyway) might very well be one of the highlights of the movie. Depp as CIA Agent Sands is downright hilarious, with campy, offbeat lines and a murderous irreverence that fits very well with the tone of the movie. At one point, he’s at a bull-fight wearing a T-shirt that says CIA in big block letters. And he’s got a third arm, which is an interesting gimmick. Sands also keeps the movie from getting bogged down by El Mariachi’s melancholy, which is a good thing for the movie. Unfortunately, there are plenty of things to bog down the movie. For starters, Salma Hayek’s parts are all awkwardly grafted into a story where, essentially, they don’t belong (much less make any sense). Likewise, these parts seem to be leading somewhere—a side-story, perhaps?—but then end abruptly, leaving the viewer in a dead-end. ‘Desperado’ in all honesty was not outstanding, so it should come as no great surprise that its sequel isn’t exactly a five-star masterpiece. ‘OUATIM’ is darkly fun and maybe slightly higher on the ‘Must See’ list of fans of ‘Desperado’ or ‘El Mariachi,’ but it’s probably best left to its own devices.

Rating: [•••] out of [•••••]

(2003) Quentin Tarantino - w/ Uma Thurman, Lucy Liu, Vivica A. Fox, Daryl Hannah, David Carradine (kind of), Michael Madsen, Julie Dreyfus, Chiaki Kuriyama, Sonny Chiba, etc., etc., etc.

Synopsis: Uma Thurman is The Bride, a would-be escapist from a life of stealthy assassinations, who, (amidst her would-be wedding) is beat up and gunned down by her own ex-team (a mostly-female team of world-class assassins, each of whom takes her code-name from a deadly snake). The Bride’s code-name is Black Mamba, and when she wakes up from her coma, she’s itchin’ for revenge. Bill’s the head of this team of assassins. The Bride wants to, in typical movie assassin revenge-fashion, kill him. Hence the title of this flick. Kill Bill. (The “Vol. 1″ is because it’s the first of two parts.) Style, violence, and hilarity ensues.

Review: What’s to say? Characteristic Tarantino, ‘Kill Bill: Vol 1′ is all about style, style, style. By my reckoning — admittedly not anywhere near the most insightful you might find — KBv1 is an exercise in entertainment. Homage to martial arts, whatever; it’s a fun piece of action. There’s witty banter, off-the-cuff narration, slick music, and dazzling colors; there’s action, revenge, and blood. What more could you want? The word picaresque comes to mind, but it’s probably slightly off-the-mark. KBv1 doesn’t quite match the brilliance of Pulp Fiction, but it’s not clear that that’s what it set out to do, really. (It’s hard to say what Vol 2 will do to this assessment, so I won’t even try to hazard a guess.) All in all, a good time to be had.

Rating: [••••] out of [•••••]

(1997) Guillermo del Toro - Mira Sorvino, Jeremy Northam, Josh Brolin, Giancarlo Giannini, Charles S. Dutton

Synopsis: In some corners (allmovie, for instance), the plot of Mimic is encapsulated in some description of “shape-shifting bugs,” which I’d like to point out as being patently false. The bugs in Mimic are not shape-shifting; they mimic humans in more general (and actually more plausible, if no less unbelievable) ways.

Review: Mimic’s decent. I’m not going to waste much time reviewing it. The premise is relatively solid, as horror movies go. Particularly as horror movies “based” in science go, seeing as the science of horror movies is generally not comprehensive. Despite the fact that it ultimately degenerates into a pretty run-of-the-mill us-against-them film (’them’ in this case being the giant bugs [hope I didn't spoil the surprise for you]), at least Mimic makes an effort to be vaguely believable, even if only in some idealistic sense. It would have been easy for the writers (or director or whoever) to jump from “the bugs we released are evolving” to “the bugs are sentient, shape-shifting entities that have built a civilization and, in addition to performing their own limited-production plays, are hell-bent on enslaving the human race.” In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the basis for the sequels (’Mimic 2: Hardshell’ and ‘Mimic: Sentinel’), which I have absolutely no intent of ever seeing. At any rate, Mimic is competent. I’ll let it rest at that.

Rating: [••½] out of [•••••]

(2003) dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu - Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, Benicio Del Toro, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Melissa Leo et al.

Synopsis: 21 Grams is a story of guilt and suffering, pain and redemption, etc.; it’s a story of three people and their families, and how their lives become hopelessly entangled. I won’t say any more; it’s difficult to say much about the plot without giving away too much, since the movie’s set up in a nonlinear fashion.

Review: I’m a big fan of nonlinearity. In ‘21 Grams’, it’s not an absolutely necessary device (as in, e.g., Memento), but it’s put to good use nonetheless. It helps mold an already-interesting story into something more, infusing mystery into scenes that would be otherwise straightforward, and redirecting suspense—telling you the outcome and letting you wonder how they get there. Which, admittedly, can sound a little lame, but in the case of ‘21 Grams’ isn’t. Having a vague but fairly straightforward idea of how the movie will end early on doesn’t help, because very little of what you see makes sense in relation to how you know the timeline starts out. It’s almost (though not quite) like watching two different movies with the same cast spliced randomly together. But, as they say, that’s not all. Performances are outstanding all around. Naomi Watts (Mulholland Drive [••••½], The Ring) does very well in vastly different scenes; Sean Penn and Benecio Del Toro both do great jobs in the strange roles into which they’re thrown (or ‘cast,’ if you prefer). I could have gone without Paul Rivers (Penn) reciting South American poetry to Cristina (Watts), but the quip about kidney damage probably offsets it, so no harm, no foul. Although pinpointing any particular actor is probably unfair because, as I said, performances are outstanding all around. Nor do I mean, the ‘main’ performances—all the actors, from Denis O’Hare as Dr. Rothberg to Antef A. Harris as ‘Basketball Guy’ to Lew Temple as the County Sheriff, do exceptionally well in their roles. The team of Iñárritu (directing), Arriaga (writing), and Santaolalla (composing) did quite well on ‘Amores Perros’ [••••], and did even better on ‘21 Grams.’ I’m eager to see what they do next.

Rating: [••••½] out of [•••••]

(2002) Roman Polanski - w/ Adrien Brody, Thomas Kretschmann, Ed Stoppard, Julia Rayner, Jessica Kate Meyer, etc.

Synopsis: ‘The Pianist’ tells the (true) story of Wladyslaw Szpilman (the titular pianist), a Jewish pianist living in Warsaw through the outbreak of WWII. The movie begins with Szpilman in what’s a fairly comfortable position even in spite of the incipient anti-Jewish measures. As the movie progresses, however, this comfort vanishes and we follow Szpilman through his travails in struggling to survive.

Review: Curiously, Polanski chose a non-style style to film the story, opting to move away from camera flourishes and whatnot, believing that a story of such power should be allowed to tell itself. The result is a film that’s well-done all around, but that is not brilliant. The technical skill here is on par with Chinatown and Rosemary’s Baby and Macbeth (and even Death and the Maiden), but there’s something missing. Bear in mind, it’s an excellent film. But…

Missing something, right; you catch on fast.

Part of the problem has to do with the fact that Polanski does almost nothing with suspense; early on the general sense of foreboding sets in—because of course we all have some idea about what’s going to happen, if not the specifics of the Szpilman’s own story—and terror throughout helps maintain that foreboding, but there’s never anything like a build-up of suspense. Quite possibly ‘The Pianist’ has no place for suspense. It’s a true story, after all, and in that sense it’s difficult to “add” suspense without belittling the story or making it too melodramatic. But because of this, Polanski is unable to craft as fine a movie as, e.g., ‘Chinatown’ or ‘Rosemary’s Baby’.

In any case, ‘The Pianist’ is mighty fine. But the best movie you’ve ever seen it is not.

Rating: [••••] out of [•••••]

(2003) dir. Gus Van Sant - w/ Alex Frost, Eric Deulen, John Robinson, Elias McConnell, Jordan Taylor, Carrie Finklea, Nicole George, Brittany Mountain, etc.

Synopsis: In what is essentially a fictionalization of the Columbine school shootings (and school violence more generally), Gus Van Sant explores a day in the life of a school that about to be subjected to intense and unexpected violence from two of its students. Van Sant follows different characters as their paths cross and tangle over the course of the film, sometimes examining the same scene from several different perspectives at different points in the movie.

Review: ‘Elephant’ is good, but not outstanding. (It won the Palm d’Or at Cannes in 2003, so this point is obviously contestable.) It’s a quiet movie—there are only a couple moments, in fact, when the action is accompanied by any music at all. This, for me, was the first strike. I’m not generally a fan of quiet movies, in part because I get easily distracted. You may not. I do, and I find it hard to become engrossed. Another thing about Elephant is that it’s highly minimalist, and the script is largely improvised. Whether the former means anything, I have no idea. What the latter means is, strike #2. While the improvisational nature lends a certain credibility to what’s being said on-screen, it also detracts from the movie in some ways. I don’t care how brilliant the actors are, the dialogue, however genuine or stylistically desirable, isn’t going to be as tight as well-written scripted dialogue. These weaknesses aside, Elephant’s a pretty good movie. There are moments of genius, but the movie doesn’t manage to sustain these moments for very long. It’s well-shot, with inordinately long tracking shots that give the setting a real sense of depth and complexity. All things considered, it’s pretty well-acted, though I wouldn’t call any of the performances exceptional. The use of various perspectives to link the action and characters together is pretty clever, and helps to give you a sense that the movie is more than a single plotline. It also feeds into the sense that nothing (school violence, for starters) can be realistically said to have a single cause. Van Sant didn’t want to resolve the issue of where school violence comes from—after all, it’s not a point that can really be resolved, certainly not in 80+ minutes.

Rating: [•••½] out of [•••••]

(2002) P.T. Anderson - Adam Sandler, Emily Watson, Luiz Guzman, & Philip Seymour Hoffman

Synopsis: Barry Egan (Adam Sandler) isn’t living a worst-case scenario, but he’s not exactly walking on sunshine. His seven sisters—and the absence of anything else in his life—have him cornered into alternating periods of rabid defensiveness and nervous reticence. He runs his own business and not much else. And then, one morning a piano-like instrument (okay, a harmonium) falls off a truck. And then a woman, Lena, (Emily Watson) stops by and asks him to see that her car gets taken care of. As you might guess from the title and/or any other knowledge of the film, ‘Punch-Drunk Love’ is an off-kilter romantic comedy sort of movie.

Review: Boogie Nights [•••] was, well, good, and Magnolia [••••½] was excellent if a little too pretentious (and maybe a little too long), but Punch-Drunk Love is nearly pitch-perfect. Adam Sandler is astoundingly good. So is Emily Watson, but you’d basically expect that. What’s difficult is trying to pinpoint what exactly makes this movie so good. First things first, it’s very well directed. The scenes are, basically, brilliantly composed; there are lots of opportunities to notice this very early on, but the most blatantly outstanding scene that caught my attention was a birthday party Barry goes to (it’s for one of his sisters), where the scene is framed well and the action’s smooth and there are like a million conversations going on that don’t distract or detract from the scene but feed into one another. Another area where PDL struts its stuff well is in expectation versus uncertainty. Essentially, there’s an excellent balance of expectation against complete uncertainty. As with previous P.T. Anderson flicks, weird, bizarre, unexpected things happen. This is true here as well. And while you have a certain idea of how things might happen, or at least how they’re going to end up—it’s a romantic comedy, after all—you’re never entirely sure. You’re not alienated by having your expectations bashed again and again into the ground, but you’re not spoon-fed, either. Another thing: Jon Brion (who did music for Magnolia and possibly other P.T. Anderson movies) puts together a very excellent score. All around, it’s a fun film. An enjoyable film. Barry’s pitiful and quirky and has some problems with his anger, but is a generally likeable character. The sisters, who constantly harp on Barry, are annoying and yell at Barry, but they’re also defensive of him. On the phone with Lena, one of Barry’s sisters apologizes for Barry’s behavior, saying, ‘he’s weird’; when Lena politely agrees with her, the sister responds, ‘well, he’s not that weird, okay? Don’t think he is.’ It’s a great balance. Really, the whole movie’s about balance. It’s never too normal or too arcane. Never too fast or too slow. Never too loud or too quiet.

Rating: [••••½] out of [•••••]